I’d expected sadness. I’d even expected shame and anger. It was all the things I was feeling now. But that wasn’t it. It was a look. Calculating, planning. When she told me we had to leave, it was like she knew it would happen. She was ready to go. Ready to run.
I turned the temperature down so that it was a few degrees cooler than Hell and stepped in under the water, letting it rain down on me. I imagined it washing everything away. The pain, the humiliation. The guilt.
The fucking guilt was killing me slowly.
Karlyn had endured the same thing I had, and I hadn’t spoken to her. I hadn’t apologized for dragging her to Trudy’s. She hadn’t wanted to go, but I pushed her into it. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my fault, but if I’d just stayed put, not let my emotions get the better of me, everything would be different.
Johnny wouldn’t have been shot. Indigo either. And Jackson. He almost died, and it would have been my fault. King should hate me. He’d almost lost his brother. The one he’d just found.
He might still lose him. Jackson would blame me for what happened to Karlyn. He would blame King for my part in it.
I heard the knock on the door as I turned off the water. King was talking to someone. I dried off and slipped his shirt back over me. I stood in front of the mirror looking at myself. The bruises were fading. Eventually they’d disappear. But the memories wouldn’t. The nightmares, the reminder of what happened. The pain I’d caused so many people.
I jumped at the knock on the door. “Grace?”
“I’ll be right there.”
“What do I do, Mama? How did you do it? How did you live the life you did with this shit hanging over your head every fucking day?” I whispered to the reflection in the mirror.
I looked so much like my mother. She was beautiful, with her blonde hair and blue eyes. My eyes were green. They must have come from my father. I should have realized Steele wasn’t him. He had dark-brown eyes.
“Who was he? Who was the man you loved?” I asked my mother’s face. “Where did he go?”
My mother talked about my father. She would never tell me who he was, but she told me how much she loved him. Said he saved her. That without him she would have become someone she didn’t want to be.
I should have known it wasn’t Steele once I met him. I should have known he wasn’t the kind of man a woman pined over. He was selfish. He wasn’t the kind of man who put someone else first.
“Who is he, Mama? How do I find him?” My words were a desperate plea whispered to a woman who couldn’t answer. “Maybe if I could find him, he could save me too.”
I waited for a breath, praying that somehow a dead woman would answer my question. It was possible. I heard her voice all the time. I just needed a memory. A phrase I heard her say years before. Any kind of hint that would give me a direction to search.
But there was nothing.
The room was silent, and for once, so was my head. It angered me that the one time my brain was quiet was when I was trying to remember something. A nugget of information long forgotten. Some obscure recollection that had been hidden.
“Sometimes I hate you,” I hissed. “You kept something from me. Something so fucking important that I’m here now still looking for it. Still searching for a piece of me I’ll never fucking find.”
I took a deep breath and with one last look at myself and the woman I used to be, combined with the woman I hated and loved, I stepped out into the room.
King sat on the bed waiting for me. His hand rested on a large white box next to him. “Who was here?” I asked, my eyes on that box.
“Jack dropped something off for you.”
“What?” My curiosity was piqued, but I didn’t move from the doorway. I didn’t reach out for the gift. I wasn’t sure I wanted whatever it was.
King stood up and pulled the cover off. I gasped, and my hand went to stifle the sound, a millisecond too late to hold it in. He pulled out the leather vest; the Silver Shadows’ emblem covered the back. My eyes scanned the words.
Property of King.
I stared at it. For a year I had envied Beck and the others. Seen them wear their cuts with pride. I’d wanted one of my own for so damn long. Never believing he would ever offer it to me.
“The words are a formality; you know that, right?”
My eyes snapped to his.
“I don’t see you as property, Grace. But you are mine. You’ve always been mine, and you always will be mine.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “I can’t wear that.”
